


First Day of My Life

by ChibiRHM



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Kidfic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-09
Updated: 2013-03-09
Packaged: 2017-12-04 18:40:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,987
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/713812
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChibiRHM/pseuds/ChibiRHM
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first girl Sid ever falls in love with is named Rachel Forbes. When he first meets her, she’s four weeks old, pink, and squishy-looking. Objectively, she’s kind of ugly, but she’s so tiny when he sees her in the incubator at NICU, and he’s never seen a baby that small.</p>
            </blockquote>





	First Day of My Life

**Author's Note:**

> I feel like everyone I have ever talked to has agreed that what fandom needed was a ridiculously id-tastic Sid and Geno have a baby fic, and yet strangely enough _no one would write it_. It was a conundrum that haunted me until I was about a quarter of the way through this and realized _I_ was writing it. Then I hated myself a little. So here, this is as close to id!fic as I get. I'm not even going to apologize or claim great literary merit here. Sometimes you just need babies, you know? Babies, man.
> 
> Thanks go to my eternal cheerleaders novembersmith and duchessofavalon, as well as the intrepid beta work of twentysomething, missmollyetc, and my BFF who isn't even in this fandom but really enjoys correcting my grammar. Also thanks to my parents, who were in no way involved in this, I just want to thank them for not murdering me, since I was a way worse baby than Rachel and also a twin. But most of all, thanks go to thefourthvine, who let me borrow copiously from her own baby stories, helped me keep Rachel realistic, and informed me in explicit detail about how terrible parenting is (while making it sound super great and rewarding). 
> 
> A mini-soundtrack is up on LJ [here](http://tongueincheeky.livejournal.com/16650.html), because you know you want some of that sweet, sweet action.

The first girl Sid ever falls in love with is named Rachel Forbes. When he first meets her, she’s four weeks old, pink, and squishy-looking. Objectively, she’s kind of ugly, but she’s so tiny when he sees her in the incubator at NICU, and he’s never seen a baby that small.

“She’s beautiful,” Sid’s mom tells his cousin Ashley. Ashley looks wrung-out and young standing next to them as they peer in at Rachel, not proud. She was at college last Sid knew, and then he came home for the summer and Ashley’s had a baby a month and a half early, and would Sid please drive his mom to the hospital to visit them.

“She’s -” Ashley starts, and rubs her palm over her face tiredly. “I don’t know, she’s a baby. She’s still too small, but they say she’s small enough to go home soon.”

Vaguely, Sid hears his mom and Ashley murmur about where home is, about how Ashley had been in the middle of finding an apartment when Rachel came and what she plans to do now. He’s too busy watching Rachel to listen to the details, watching her tiny barrel chest go in and out, counting her ten perfect fingers and toes.

“We could help,” he says impulsively. “They could stay with us. I mean, for the summer at least, right?”

His mother smiles at him. “I was just about to offer,” she says.

“I couldn’t possibly,” says Ashley, but she looks pathetically hopeful, and Sid’s mom waves her hand, and that’s that.

\- - -

Ashley and Rachel move into Sid’s old room a week later, and Sid doesn’t do much besides hold Rachel while Ashley and his mom direct his dad where to move things and Sid’s dad insists he’s doing just fine and doesn’t need Sid’s help. Rachel doesn’t do much either, besides shit herself. Sid’s in charge of the shit, mostly.

The first thing Sid learns from babysitting Rachel is that babies cry a lot, sometimes for no reason. Crying that insistently doesn’t mean he broke Rachel or that Ashley or his mom or Social Services is going to come swooping in and take her away.

The second thing Sid learns is he doesn’t quite love Rachel the way he thought he would. He feels a deep, instinctive urge to care for her, to protect her, the way he feels about all babies. Rachel doesn’t feel special to him in any way, probably because she’s less a person and more a living, breathing lump. She cries when she’s hungry, he feeds her if he’s around to help, and she goes back to sleep.

But he misses Rachel when he goes back to LA to train some more. He misses hearing her cry and talk to herself in long strings of vowels the way she does around a bottle, he misses the baby powder and milky smell of her hair, he misses her warm, comforting weight. He spends so much time Skyping to see her that Duchene keeps joking that she might as well be Sid’s, and his stomach clenches with longing. Because he does want that, one day, and he has no idea when it’ll be true for him, or if it ever will.

\- - -

Sid isn’t very good at keeping in contact with people. He could blame it on being busy or working hard, but the truth is he’s just bad at it. It’s a lot of effort and there aren’t that many people he bothers for. He doesn’t know why Geno is one of those people he does try with. They’re friends, but they aren’t close the way he is with Flower or Colby, more like he is with Max or Jordy, the kind of friend he’d usually catch up with over drinks like no time had passed and then they’d go their separate ways for six months again. But Geno has an effortless charm Sid’s always been jealous of, a way of making people do things they wouldn’t normally, and he’s long since conned Sid into keeping in constant contact with him whenever he goes back to Russia.

“For hockey,” he always says solemnly. “And so I am not forgetting English.”

Except he and Sid never end up talking about hockey. It’s always how Sergei is doing, or arguing over the best Gatorade flavor (Geno says orange, Sid is staunchly in favor of yellow), or fishing, or whatever wedding Geno missed by being a continent away. So when Sid e-mails Colby for baby advice, he e-mails Geno a quick note about Rachel too, because he thinks Geno would want to know. Sure enough Geno immediately replies, _skype!!!!!! we talk. baby exciting)))_

“She’s really not that exciting,” Sid promises Geno when he calls to videochat. “She’s a newborn.”

“I want see,” Geno demands, not that Sid expected much less, not when it was Geno and babies. “You not give pictures.”

“Yeah, hold on,” Sid says, checking his watch. He needs to wake Rachel for her bottle. it’s amazing she hasn’t already woken up from their talking, and while his mom always says to let sleeping babies lie, he thinks a strict schedule is better for Rachel, anyway. “Give me five minutes? It’s time for her lunch, anyway.”

“Okay,” Geno says, clearly content to settle in for the wait, so Sid microwaves the bottle he made earlier that morning and wakes Rachel, who screams at him until she gets the plastic teat in her mouth.

“Okay,” he says when Rachel’s settled enough to move into the living room. Geno’s still raptly staring ahead into nothingness, and his face lights up the second Rachel appears on screen, even before Sid shifts the blanket so her face is visible to the camera.

“She _beautiful_ ,” Geno breathes, unconsciously reaching out before he seems to remember he can’t touch her through a screen. “What name?”

“Rachel,” Sid says, and that makes Geno frown.

“Rachel not a Russian name.”

“Yeah well,” Sid shifts her and she makes a discontent noise at him. “Neither is Sidney, I did okay.”

Geno snorts, but doesn’t actually say anything judgmental, just goes, “How old?”

“Almost seven weeks,” Sid says.

“She a tiny little baby,” Geno coos.

“Should have seen her a month ago,” Sid says, looking down at Rachel. She doesn’t look tiny, she looks huge to him. She’s almost ten pounds, now. She’s also almost finished with her formula and making her garbled noises around the bottle.

“Talk lots,” Geno says when Sid takes away the bottle and she really goes at it, releasing a long string of totally nonsense vowels that almost visibly turns Geno to putty. He murmurs to her in Russian while Sid burps her, and she seems to like that, because it’s the easiest time he’s had yet.

“Hey, what were you calling her?” Sid asks, because there was one word he caught several times. “She liked it, so it better have been nice.”

“Ptichka,” Geno sounds out. “Mean little bird. Because she talk.”

“Aaaa-aaaa-aaaa-aaaah,” Rachel agrees, and then hiccups.

\- - -

The most difficult thing Sid has found about helping raise a kid isn’t anything existential or life-changing, it’s trying to do the very practical job of clothing Rachel. He’s somehow ended up responsible for that while Ashley tries desperately to catch up on schoolwork and complete her summer courses, because it’s an easy way to help, and it’s the sort of thing that everyone means to do but never quite gets around to.

Rachel came home with almost no clothes that fit her. In NICU they had just had her in a diaper or swaddled in a blanket, and the small suitcase of clothing Ashley had gotten as presents for Rachel was all for a normal-sized newborn, which Rachel still wasn’t quite yet. And furthermore, it was all pink. “I hate pink,” Ashley grimaces over her readings, and Sid agrees. He doesn’t have an issue with pink - he’s been friends with Max Talbot too long to have issues with any color but Flyers orange - but he doesn’t want Rachel in only pink onesies or ones with sparkly words like “Princess” and “Spoiled” and “Diva” across her chest either. She’s too young to be any of those things, and even if she wasn’t, Rachel shouldn’t grow up thinking “spoiled” was a good thing to be.

But even if he was okay with tons of pink and sparkles and dubious adjectives, he’s pretty sure that no one who manufactures clothing has ever _had_ a baby. The sizes between brands fluctuate wildly - some of them Rachel fits in the 6-12 month sizes and some she fits in the newborn, and others she swims in even the smallest sizes. And if Sid is lucky and finds something that isn’t too pink and fits Rachel, it’s _always_ pastel. Pastel, he’s discovered, lasts a good five minutes on a baby before it’s stained with poop or spit-up or formula or some horrible combination of the three. He ends up just buying a million of the basic onesie multipacks at Target that he feels no guilt about ruining, lets his mom get all the little sweaters and jackets and dresses that she wants, and tries not to worry when Rachel ruins those, too.

Geno gets Sid’s entire rant on baby clothing when he calls to ask how big Rachel is so he can send her something. “So you dress her like you,” he says when Sid is done and breathing heavily. He sounds like he’s privately laughing at Sid, which, fuck him, he’s never tried to clothe a baby.

“I don’t wear onesies,” Sid snaps.

“No,” Geno agrees, “I mean she always wear same thing but different colors, like character in cartoon. I bet you order Pens clothing, wear half time too, just like Daddy.”

“Fu - shut up, Geno,” Sid says because Geno’s right, he’s always right, even if Sid isn’t really her father. Rachel watches him, drooling over the Pens onesie he likes best like she’s making fun of him too.

“She should have pretty things.”

“She throws up on pretty things,” Sid says, but Geno just laughs, out loud this time, and three days later a sizable box shows up on Sid’s doorstep. It’s filled with bibs and changing table mats and a meticulously translated set of instructions for getting stains out of anything from Geno’s mom and a little stuffed penguin who’s clearly meant to be Iceburgh and board books in Russian with a note that says “I read so she learn”. It’s all thoughtful, practical things, the kinds of things Sid always means to buy but never does, always so focused on the basics he forgets there are things designed to make those basics easier for them. Geno probably asked his mom what they would want when he got the laundry tips, but still, it means a lot.

\- - -

As summer ends and Ashley’s regular classes start up, Sid finds himself taking Rachel more often, for both their sakes. Ashley’s frazzled and studying more and more, and Sid is trying to distract himself from all the hockey he’s not playing. Rachel’s on her playmat, batting at the dangly bumble bees and flowers, when Sid gets a call from Pat about options now that they’re locked out. Rachel seems pretty well-distracted and he feels weird talking business in front of her, so he moves out of her line of vision, and Rachel screams.

“Do you have a _baby_?” Pat asks, concerned, when Sid picks up.

“Cousin,” Sid says awkwardly. “I’m babysitting. Look I’ll -”

“No, by all means, call me back,” Pat says, and hangs up.

Rachel’s worked herself into a state when Sid comes back in the room, red-faced and flailing on the floor until Sid pops into her view, and then she does the most amazing thing Sid’s ever seen - she stops. It’s like a switch flips as soon as she sees him. She gives him a gummy little smile, and Sid picks her up immediately.

“You know me,” he whispers, stroking the tears off her cheek.

Rachel coos in agreement, and she suddenly feels like an actual person, like a real tiny human who thinks he’s special. She’s chosen him as someone she likes enough to stop crying for, and he’s never seen her stop crying for anything, not even Iceburgh, the stuffed penguin Geno sent that she’s grown so attached to. She smiled at _him_ ; that coo was for _him_. How he feels holding Rachel and sitting on the floor of the living room is the closest he’s ever gotten to feeling like he’s won the Stanley Cup or Olympic gold all over again.

\- - -

Coming into his parents’ house to the sound of someone who isn’t Rachel crying isn’t normal, and Sid panics when he realizes it’s Ashley and he can’t hear Rachel crying along with her.

“Ashley?” He calls, running into the living room. “Are you okay? Is Rachel okay?”

“Rachel’s fine,” Ashley says, mopping up her runny eyeliner and mascara. “I’m just... I got my syllabuses today and all the apartments I looked at are way out of my budget and I’m kind of overwhelmed.”

“And you made the drive back here?” Sid asks, sitting down and putting his arm around her, and for some reason that must have been the wrong thing to say. Ashley’s chin crumples the same way Rachel’s does and she bursts into tears again, pitching forward against Sid’s chest.

“I can’t do this,” she sobs. “I can’t be a mom.”

“You’re a great mom,” Sid soothes, rubbing her shoulders. “You’re just overtired and -”

“It’s not that,” Ashley says firmly, taking a steadying breath. “It’s not, Sid, I just can’t do this. Your parents have been great, but I keep hoping this will all be over. And that’s - that’s awful, I shouldn’t wake up in the morning and wish it would all go away, and I _do_. And then I see you with her, and that’s how I should be, but I’m not. She deserves a parent who’s ready for her. And I’ve been reading about adoption -”

“ _Adoption_?” Sid asks, and then looks at Ashley’s face, set resolute and stubborn. “You’ve already decided you’re going ahead with it,” he realizes.

“Like, two weeks ago,” Ashley wrings her hands. “I mean, it kills me, the thought of not seeing her grow up, but it’s what’s right for me. I just - I just have to get the guts to tell your parents. And mine.”

“I’m sorry,” Sid says, because he wishes there was anything else he could say. Ashley smiles at him anemically.

“I wish I was, too,” she says.

And as much as it kills Sid, Ashley doesn’t change her mind, either. Sid knows it must be hard for his mom when Ashley tells her, but she takes it with blank-faced grace.

“You can’t let her do this, it’s just a rough patch,” Sid hisses, following his mom around and burping Rachel after dinner.

“I’m not letting her do anything,” his mom says mildly. “She makes her own decisions. You don’t tell a parent how to parent, Sidney. If she thinks this is what’s best, who am I to stop her?”

“Because it’s crazy! Since when do you let people just _give up_ -”

His mother wheels on him with a glare. “You stop right there,” she says fiercely. “And I _never_ want to hear you call what Ashley is doing ‘giving up’ in my house ever again. She is doing what’s best for Rachel, and if you can’t respect that, you keep that to yourself. Do I make myself clear?”

“Yes,” Sid mumbles around his clawing panic at the thought of Rachel going away forever, not now when she’s just started to know him.

The panic doesn’t abate, not even when Ashley decides it’ll be an open adoption. “So I can still get to know her one day,” she says, like that makes it better, Sid being able to see pictures of Rachel with another family. He still can’t imagine giving Rachel to anyone, and lately he’s been lying awake at night wondering what would happen if Ashley gave Rachel to him. It’s a stupid idea for a million reasons. It’s totally crazy. And yet the more he thinks about it, about how Rachel looks at him now when he comes in the room, the more certain he becomes that it has to happen, that his heart couldn’t take Rachel going anywhere or to anyone else.

He keeps it to himself, though, at least until his next call with Geno, which happens in the middle of an inexplicable crying jag of Rachel’s. But the second she hears the incoming call noise and hears Geno say hello, she goes silent, then kicks her feet, ah-ing a little in excitement.

“Wow,” Sid says, and at Geno’s confused expression, “it’s Rachel. She definitely recognizes you. She just calmed down because you Skyped.”

Geno shrugs modestly. “Girls love,” he says.

Sid laughs a little, then reflexively checks to make sure no one is listening, even though his mom left him with Rachel an hour ago. “Seriously, though,” he says, “can I tell you something, and you have to promise to listen to me and not tell anyone else, okay?” Geno nods solemnly, so Sid takes a deep breath and says, “Ashley’s giving Rachel up for adoption and I... I think I want to keep her.”

He expects Geno to point out how nuts that is, to ask how he expects to raise a daughter on his own, but Geno just smiles and goes, “That great, Sid.”

“I mean, Ashley’s doing okay, but she can’t deal with having a kid and school,” Sid goes on, feeling strangely defensive. “And she wants it to be open so she can see Rachel, but what if the family moves away or something? And I, I really love Rachel, and I’m good with her, and I can’t stand the thought of never seeing her -”

“Is good idea, Sid,” Geno interrupts. “She family, you love her. Is that easy.”

Sid glances down at Rachel, nestled in his arms, and she’s just the best thing in the entire world to him. “It’s kind of too easy,” he says, and Geno tuts.

“When you know, you know,” Geno says, and Sid - Sid knows.

\- - -

Telling his family he wants to adopt Rachel goes both ten times better and worse than Sid expects. Ashley bursts into tears and hugs him, Taylor shrieks “I _knew_ it!” over the phone, and Sid’s parents just exchange worried looks.

“We know you’re not happy about Rachel going away and that you’ve really bonded with her, honey,” his mom says when she calls him to help with dishes so they can “have a talk”, “but I don’t think you’ve thought through what a big commitment parenting is, especially doing it on your own.”

“But I have,” Sid protests, and he really has - not just about the good parts, but the bad ones too. He’s thought about 2 AM feedings and dirty diapers and hiring a nanny and saying goodbye to his meager social life, and he’s terrified, but that doesn’t make him any less positive it’s what he wants.

He spends a lot of time talking to Geno, because Geno’s the only person who seems to support his decision instead of treating Sid like he’s gone crazy.

“Is good,” Geno tells him. “You ready. I know this.”

“How?” Sid asks, and Geno pouts, the way he always does when he’s trying to form a long thought in English.

“You know why I not have kids yet?” He says finally. “Because I never really sure. I always too scared, and mother always tell me to not do until I know.”

“I’m scared,” Sid says. “I’m terrified, are you kidding?”

“But you still do,” Geno says. “You still sure. I never sure.” He laughs a little bitterly. “Why I single, too.”

“You - oh. Sorry,” Sid says awkwardly. He’s never sure if Geno means that, or just doesn’t know enough English to understand the nuances of being on a break versus being broken up for good. And even if Sid did know, he never feels comfortable talking about Oksana, who he’s met maybe three times and never had a conversation with. He can’t tell if he should be sorry, if Geno’s better rid of her, or if Geno’s ever really rid of her at all.

“Is okay,” Geno waves him off. “I sure is time to be over. And you sure about Rachel, yes?”

“Yes,” Sid says, because it’s just that simple.

\- - -

Rachel is a perfect, easy baby, or so everyone tells Sid. She gets up twice a night like clockwork, she’s generally happy (or ambivalent, anyway), and she’s healthy. She’s a few weeks slow on physical development, but as much as Sid worries and calls Dr. Huang, she swears that’s normal and has nothing to do with Rachel being premature or a sign of something horribly wrong. It could be worse, Sid’s mom always reminds him. Rachel could have colic like Taylor did.

And then Rachel gets an ear infection.

She was sniffly and a little cranky the past few days, but it hadn’t been anything Sid worried about, or at least, he had tried not to, since he was already becoming one of those neurotic parents who called the pediatrician over every tiny thing. But then Rachel feels warm when he kisses her goodnight, and the next morning she hates everything and is smacking her left ear, whining so much that Sid calls his mom and says, “I think I broke Rachel.”

“Well,” his mom says in her insufferably patient mother voice, “I can hear her crying, so she can’t be _too_ broken.”

“She’s feverish and keeps hitting herself,” Sid says desperately, trying to stop her by placing his own hand over Rachel’s ear, but that just makes her wail even louder.

“Is she hitting the side of her head?”

“How did you know?” How, Sid wonders, do parents know everything, and when is he going to get that superpower?

“Because that’s an ear infection, sweetie,” his mother says. “Call the pediatrician and get some antibiotics. She’ll be fine in a few days. You might not be, but she’ll be fine.”

It’s not nearly as bad as his mom advertises. Once the Dr. Huang gets them looked at and sorted out, the hardest thing Sid has to do is figure out how to get Rachel not to spit the baby Tylenol back out when he tries to feed it to her. But it isn’t easy, either. Rachel insists on almost never being put down and takes naps his arms a couple times, and she cries much easier than she used to. If her formula isn’t exactly the right temperature, tears. Sid takes too long changing her diaper, tears. She’s tired, tears until she sobs herself to sleep. The tears are the hardest thing for Sid. He’s used to being able to soothe Rachel easily, and now she cries for no reason, sometimes just because her medicine is wearing off and she’s mad about it, and there’s nothing he can do to make her feel better.

He misses Geno absurdly, because Geno’s the only person he knows who won’t use this as an excuse to go, “are you _sure_ you want to keep her?” An ear infection doesn’t change his resolve, he’s just tired from all the crying and wants to hear an adult voice telling him he’s made the right decision. But Geno’s got a break he’s spending in Moscow, and he’d sounded so excited about seeing his friends (and girlfriend, Sid presumes, though Geno didn’t explicitly mention her) that Sid doesn’t want to disturb him with his whiny, stupid, self-inflicted problems. He’s a father now. It’s his job to be strong and comforting and sure, even when he feels the opposite of all of those things.

It takes four days for Rachel to go back to her relatively unflappable self, four days of no skating and working out as quietly as he can in his home gym while keeping an ear on the baby monitor. He feels bad asking his mom to watch Rachel as soon as she’s better, like he’s trying to run away, but after four days he’s so antsy for the feel of ice under his feet that he’ll do pretty much anything to get it.

“Oh, honey,” his mother says when she comes over, scooping Rachel up easily and kissing his cheek. “You look like a parent now.”

“I don’t feel like a parent,” Sid says blankly. “I feel like I put myself under house arrest.”

His mother just pats his back and says, “Sometimes, it’s the same thing. Are you sure -”

“I’m sure.” Sid says firmly, because even the last half-week hasn’t changed his mind, so nothing will. “Totally sure.”

\- - -

By early December, Sid is starting to feel paranoid. Ashley submitted the paperwork to make Rachel his what feels like ages ago, but neither of them get any word if it’s gone through, or if Sid can ever go back to Pittsburgh with her. He feels like maybe the government knows about that one time he gave Rachel too-hot formula or cut a fingernail too close and made it bleed. He feels like a fake, like when he takes Rachel out and she’s even a little fussy, people will know he’s a fraud, that he isn’t a real parent, or even a very good one.

He tries, though. He reads every parenting book he can get his hands on and takes extensive notes, even though they constantly contradict each other. He pumps his mom for advice and information, and he loves Rachel as hard as he can. Everyone says he’s doing a good job, but they say that even on bad days when Rachel’s wearing a spit-up stained onesie and needs a bath and Sid’s gotten almost no sleep, so the bar seems pretty low.

He gets the call that Rachel’s all his right before Christmas, and he can’t help but do a completely ridiculous celly after he hangs up, and that makes Rachel _laugh_.

“You laughed,” Sid tells her blankly, freezing mid-celly. She’s been smiling at everyone and everything and happy squealing for months now, but she doesn’t laugh. Sometimes Sid thinks she will when he comes back from training, or any time she hears the video call incoming noise, because she knows that means Geno, but she doesn’t, she just smiles and shrieks. It’s a little developmentally weird, and he’d been trying not to worry, since Dr. Huang said it was okay, that all babies are slow on something or other. But that noise she made from her playpen sounded like a giggle. Experimentally, he repeats the celly, and there it is again, the vibrating monkey-shriek noise that’s unmistakably laughter.

“You’re so _smart_ ,” Sid says, picking her up and lifting her in the air. She’s beaming at him now, waving her arms and babbling. “Yes, you’re the smartest girl. You’re _my_ smartest girl, aren’t you?”

Rachel giggles and drools on his face, and yeah, that’s her, alright, and she’s the best early Christmas present he’s gotten in his life.

\- - -

Sid’s always known, on some level, that the lockout gave him borrowed time with Rachel. And it’s not that he doesn’t miss hockey - he misses it every hour of every day - but he knows if he was playing hockey, he’d be missing spending so much time with his daughter, and that on some level, he’ll always be missing something now. So when Pat calls and says, “Come down to New York, Mario and Ron have a plan to end the lockout,” he’s cautious.

“You need me, specifically?” He asks, watching Rachel examine one of her blocks on the play mat before sticking it in her mouth.

“I’d have thought you’d be jumping at the opportunity. You okay, Sid?”

“It’ll be the first time I leave Rachel,” Sid admits. Rachel looks up at the sound of her name and squeals a little hello, making Sid smile reflexively.

“I know,” Pat says gently. “And I’m not gonna lie and say leaving your kid ever gets easy, but you’ve gotta do it sometime.”

“Yeah, I know,” Sid sighs. “Mario and Ron are sure this is gonna work, though?”

“I wouldn’t call you if they weren’t,” Pat says, and that’s enough for Sid, he books his flight and calls his parents as soon as he hangs up.

Rachel is completely unconcerned when Sid leaves, so Sid tries to be too, and tries not to take it personally when he knows she’s too young to understand that he’s gone or miss him. Instead he focuses on the proposals Mario and Ron sent him via Pat and compares them to the NHLPA proposals he’s been keeping up with through e-mails. It seems doable, he thinks. He can do this. And for the first two days, it really seems like he’s going to. But on the third day, it falls apart completely, and, exhausted, Mario leans back in the anonymous hotel room they’ve been trying to find a solution in and says, “Gentlemen, I think we’re stuck,” and Sid and Ron nod miserably.

“Well,” Pat says with a sigh, “nothing to do now except drink to forget.”

So Sid takes Pat’s advice and goes to the hotel bar, and even though he doesn’t think Pat was advising him to get laid, he does that too, because God knows when he’s going to get the chance again. Her name is Danielle and she’s...well, it’s fine, She clearly has no idea who he is, because when he introduces himself, she does the thing girls who don’t recognize him always do, where she cocks her head to the side and goes, “Sidney, that’s a weird name.”

He just feels guilty the entire time, unable to stop judging himself for leaving Rachel to go do _this_. He can’t stop thinking that Danielle is someone’s daughter too, and wondering how he’d feel if someone picked Rachel up in a bar twenty years from now and just used her to get laid. But Sid gets off anyway, because he knows how to shut his mind up and concentrate on a beautiful girl. And he makes sure Danielle gets off, because that’s only fair. He doubts he rocks her world, but he’s confident he got the job done pretty well.

Sid refuses to think of the trip as a failure. It’s just a practice for what he’s going to have to do whenever hockey does come back; long, unsatisfying road trips where he sometimes loses more than he wins.

\- - -

Sid had never meant to keep Rachel a virtual secret from everyone but Geno, but at first she had been just some baby, and then when he’d adopted her for real, he’d hardly had a moment to do more than send a quick team e-mail. And based on the sheer volume of congratulatory e-mail and packages that have arrived on Sid’s doorstep, he’s not going to want for babysitters when he gets back down to Pittsburgh.

The lockout ends when Sid is blearily waking up for Rachel’s second bottle of the night, and the cacophony his phone makes makes Rachel scream back. And with that scream Sid feels like he wakes up in more ways than one, to a reality where there’s no routine or game plan for how he’s going to juggle Rachel and hockey, just the knowledge that somehow he has to, and he has no room for error.

“I feel like I thought this through, but I didn’t really think this through at all,” Sid tells Flower, who’s the first person to actually call instead of texting.

“I think kids always feel like that, man,” Flower says.

“Yours isn’t even born,” Sid protests.

“And I still don’t know what the fuck I’m gonna do.”

“Maybe you never do,” Sid sighs. “I think it’s like, no one tells you parenting is pulling stuff out of your -” Rachel looks up at him, “I mean, making stuff up and hoping it works.”

“Well, your kid looks cute and happy in these pictures, so I think you’re doing okay,” Flower says, and Rachel chooses that moment to decide that she’s officially done with tummy time and no longer wants to suffer the indignity of improving her motor skills, and lets out a protesting yowl. “Is that her?” Flower asks. “Because it sounds like you’re torturing a cat.”

“Tummy time,” Sid says around Rachel’s unhappy noises as she tries to buck the gentle hand he has on her to keep her from rolling onto her back. “This will be you in nine months.”

“Yeah, but I’ll have Vero to help me, and you’re on your own.” Flower sounds worried, which is an unfamiliar enough tone of voice that it takes Sid a moment to place it. “You know you can ask us for help, right? We might not always be able to give it -”

“I know,” Sid says, because the entire team’s pretty much offered the same thing, even though most of them have kids of their own to deal with. “I didn’t mean to keep you guys out of it, it was just, like, at first she was just some kid -”

“- And we know how Geno feels about kids.”

“Right, and then I _had_ her and I didn’t exactly have time to call and like, have a conversation with everyone.”

“Well we have plenty of time now, eh?” Sid can picture it, the two of them sitting next to each other on long flights for the rest of their careers, sharing pictures of their kids as they grow up, one after the other. “We got you,” Flower says, and Sid feels like they really do, like going to Pittsburgh’s going to be really, really good.

\- - -

Moving down to Pittsburgh is a nightmare.

It should be great - he’s got a new house to move into, a new baby to move in with, a new season to start - but it’s awful. Rachel, previously so calm and angelic (and Sid now appreciates exactly how calm and angelic she really was), decides that Sid packing is a good time to cut her first tooth and learn how to scoot, roughly simultaneously. One minute she’s sitting on her blanket, a little grumpy but handling Sid not paying attention to her while he cleans out the refrigerator with relative grace, and the next thing he knows she’s inched herself over to his hockey bag, taken out a puck, and started mouthing it frantically.

“What the - _no_ ,” Sid yelps, picking her up and taking the puck away, not even thinking about how she got there. “Bad, Rachel. Not for in your mouth.”

Rachel screws up her face.

“That’s right,” Sid says. “Yucky.”

Rachel throws back her head and bursts into inconsolable tears. And then, while Sid is staring at her bewildered with a drool-covered puck in one hand, he notices a little puffineess on her bottom gums, just where a front tooth would go.

“Shit,” he says.

Sid is sure there are a million jokes to be made about Sidney Crosby literally teething his child on hockey pucks, but, he finds in between packing and ordering duplicate everything to be next-day delivered to Pittsburgh, they’re the best solution he’s found to keep Rachel calm and happy. He sanitizes them thoroughly, of course, sometimes even freezes them, and they’re perfectly rubbery, and Rachel loves them. She even cuddles one when she falls asleep in-flight, one hand clenched around the puck resting on her tummy and one clenched around Iceburgh the stuffed penguin. He looks at her little stubborn chin (the Forbes chin, his mom always says, like theirs), her button nose and dark blonde hair that reminds him of Taylor and Ashley, and he thinks, with a little bit of a clenching feeling in his chest, that she’s never looked more like his than she does right then.

\- - -

Parenting, as far as Sid can tell, is less a journey and more blind fumbling from one disaster to the next. So far, Sid feels like he’s dealt pretty well with all the disasters so far, but babyproofing is totally kicking his ass. There’s no time to prepare, no warning, just a suddenly mobile (and surprisingly fast) baby and a giant, echoing new house to lose her in.

The first thing Sid tries to buy is baby gates, which are nearly a bust. None of the doorways in his new house are standard sized (which feels like something he should have thought of, he built the place, after all) and, while they successfully corral Rachel, he can’t figure out how to open and close them either. Sid’s never thought of himself as dumb before, but baby gates make him reconsider both that and his decision to go straight into hockey after high school, since they seem to require at least a college degree to open.

There’s just so _much_ for Sid to babyproof, and he has no idea if he should put soft bumpers around every edge in his house and lock every toilet, or if he should just leave the lower cabinets empty, cover the sockets, and call it a day. Nathalie and Mario aren’t much help, even though they’re willing to take Rachel while Sid muddles through. “There’s just so much more than when our children were babies,” Nathalie says when she takes Rachel for the first day back at shortened training camp. “Maybe you should hire professionals, Sid.”

“Maybe,” Sid says doubtfully, but he doesn’t like the idea of entrusting strangers with Rachel’s safety, especially when she’d already figured out how to dismantle the socket covers he got and had nearly electrocuted herself once that morning already. He loves Rachel and loves how bright she is - how smart and mobile and clever - but he finds himself thinking, lately, that maybe he wouldn’t have minded too much getting a baby who was just a bit dumber.

Nathalie brings Rachel by after practice to meet the team, just like Sid asked, because he felt odd having a daughter none of them knew. She happily lets herself get passed around and drools on everyone, effectively turning a room full of the toughest men Sid knows into cooing puddles of mush.

“Obviously not _actually_ your daughter,” Flower says, booping Rachel’s nose and making her giggle. “Way too cute for that.”

“Hey, she -” Sid starts, but he’s interrupted by Geno, who must have just finished changing, go, “Do I see my _ptichka_?”

Rachel freezes, and then squeals delightedly, kicking and squirming in every which way to try to find the source of Geno’s voice. When she does spot him she smacks Sid in the face with her fists and nearly falls to the floor trying to wriggle into Geno’s waiting arms. Geno seems just as delighted to see her, babbling in Russian while Rachel tries to babble back.

“You were not kidding about him,” Flower mutters.

“Right?” Sid hisses. “Do you see why I told him about her?”

“Good luck getting her back, man,” Flower says, clapping him on the shoulder before he goes, leaving Sid alone with Rachel and Geno and feeling distinctly like the third wheel.

“Here,” he says awkwardly, during a lull where Geno’s just gazing soppily at Rachel. He reaches into the baby bag and pulls out Iceburgh, and Rachel immediately clings to him, like she always does. Geno’s face lights up in recognition.

“She like the penguin I send,” he says, pleased, while Rachel contentedly gnaws at the beak.

“I named him Iceburgh,” Sid confesses, and Geno laughs.

“Of course you do.” He tickles Rachel’s tummy and she squirms and kicks happily. “She such a good girl.”

“Not lately,” Sid sighs. “She’s teething. And _moving_. She started a few days ago and she won’t _stop_ , and I’m not going to have time to babyproof anything, now, and she’s still waking up once or twice a night, so my sleep -”

“Mario and Nathalie?” Geno asks.

“They can watch her,” Sid says, “and they do, obviously, but they can’t take her at night.”

“It work out,” Geno promises, even though he doesn’t say how, not that Sid expected him to. It isn’t until the next day that Geno corners him before they go on ice for practice and says, “I have... I fix problem. With Rachel.”

“Solution,” Sid supplies. “You have a solution.”

“Yes,” Geno says, waving him off impatiently. “I have _solution_. You bring Rachel to my house.”

“I can’t do that,” Sid says. “She needs somewhere babyproofed, and that doesn’t help at night -”

“Sid,” Geno interrupts firmly, and Sid looks at Geno, really looks at him for the first time. He looks hopeful, which seems odd. “I babyproof two rooms yesterday, after we talk. I can watch her while you do rest. But easier to take care of baby as team, yes? So you and Rachel come to my house and... you stay.”

“Oh,” Sid breathes. It’s crazy, the fact that Geno did that is crazy, and it’s a completely insane idea. But Geno _babyproofed_ for him, Sid’s drowning on his own, and even if Geno wasn’t the only port in a storm, he’d be a welcome one. “I - you’re asking us to move in, right?”

“As long as you like,” Geno agrees. He’s bouncing a little, like he can tell Sid’s about to cave, and Sid doesn’t even bother pretending to think about it or act anything but grateful when he says, “yes, _please_.”

\- - -

Before moving in with Geno, Sid had never understood why people made sympathetic clucking noises when he said he was raising Rachel mostly on his own. It wasn’t the easiest thing in the world, but it wasn’t as if he knew what it was like to raise her any other way. Besides, he had his parents or Mario and Nathalie to help, he had enough money to hire a really good nanny agency, and Rachel was down to getting up only once a night. She’d even slept through the night in Cole Harbour a few times, but the move had rattled her up. And yes, she took up every second of Sid’s life that wasn’t hockey or gym time, but it wasn’t as though he had hobbies before Rachel.

But Geno is like the answer to every problem Sid didn’t even know he had. He’s amazing with Rachel and she adores him. He happily takes over half of the 2 AM feedings and diaper changes so Sid gets proper sleep every other night, he’s someone to leave Rachel with so leaving the house is suddenly easy as grabbing his keys again and not an entire production, and he’s someone else for Rachel to spit up on, so Sid has a 50% chance of being the one leaving the house without a shirt stained with baby vomit. There are no more babyproofing disasters, because Geno was thorough, no more of that drowning feeling where Sid has to go drop Rachel off with Mario and Nathalie or hold himself together until naptime so he can get on a tandem bike and work out all his stress.

“I’m seriously considering marrying you,” Sid tells Geno, watching him deftly feed Rachel banana mash for lunch, and Geno laughs.

“Is sleep talking,” he says, and then coos something encouraging to Rachel in Russian, handing her another spoonful.

“Sleep is a perfectly good reason to marry someone,” Sid insists.

“Ba-aaah,” Rachel agrees, and flings banana on Geno’s face for extra emphasis.

But for all Geno’s a godsend, he’s still someone new to Sid. Rachel might have almost no issue with a new house and new person paying attention to her, but Sid always feels like he’s on the wrong foot with Geno, like something is suddenly getting lost in translation between them. One minute Geno will be fine, and the next minute he’ll get sullen, or temperamental. He’s touchy about his personal space, suddenly, he shuts down at any mention of the lockout or what he did during it, and he uses Rachel as a buffer when all else fails. What happened in Russia between Geno’s breakup and whatever pressure the KHL put on him is clearly still bothering him, and he’s using Rachel to avoid thinking or talking about it. Sid knows he should put his foot down and make Geno stop, because Geno won’t be hurt and needing distraction and there for Rachel forever, not the way Sid’s signed on to be. But he’s there now, and Sid needs Geno badly enough that he swallows all his worries and tries to just accept what’s given to him.

Accepting means accepting responsibilities, too, like accepting that he’ll have to explain to the press why he has a kid and is living with Geno now, but Sid is used to needing to explain to people who think he’s weird that actually what he is doing is completely normal and logical. He doesn’t get why bringing up talking to the press pisses Geno off, though - it’s a simple narrative to go over. Sid has a kid, and he can’t be expected to deal with a kid and playing hockey on his own, and Geno’s offering him a place to stay because Geno is a good guy. But Geno just gets that bullish, stormy look on his face whenever Sid starts to say something and goes “No need to remind, Sid,” before he stomps off to another part of the house.

“Geno’s weird sometimes,” he tells Rachel, who gurgles happily at him. He’s glad, at this age at least, that she always agrees with him.

\- - -

Sid dislikes the first nanny the agency sends over, who reminds him of his great aunt in all the worst, cheek-pinching ways. But the second one is a woman named Mona who he instantly loves. She doesn’t look like a nanny - she looks too young to be a nanny, for one thing, still all long, coltish limbs, and for another her hair has fire-engine red streaks and she has a stud in her nose that makes Geno look worried. But she’s got a firm handshake, she’s smart, she’s funny, she makes no sign of knowing who Sid and Geno are or being unduly awed by them besides a vague mention that her fiance is glad the lockout is over. Most importantly to Sid, she doesn’t talk to Rachel in a high-pitched voice or like she’s dumb just because she’s a baby, which always sets Sid’s teeth on edge.

“I hated that as a kid,” she tells him, squatting down to where Rachel is sitting and playing with a spatula, which is her new favorite toy. Rachel looks at her for a few minutes, suspicious, like she thinks Mona’s going to take the spatula away, and then takes two of Mona’s fingers and sticks them in her mouth. Mona doesn’t seem fazed in the slightest.

“Aaah- _ah,_ ” Rachel says, which is one of her approving noises, not that anyone but Sid can tell the difference.

Mona gives him the number of the last family she nannied for, and if Sid wasn’t sold on her already, he’s sold on her after talking to the Gundersons, who give Mona glowing praise, and what seals it is when Jake Gunderson (age 7 ½) calls him five minutes later snuffling and asking Sid if he can please send Mona back.

“She gave me her number an’ says I can visit her on off days,” he tells Sid mournfully, “but it’s not the _same_.”

“So you liked Mona, huh?” Sid asks, and Jake makes a ‘duh’ noise.

“Mona’s the best,” he says.

It takes another five minutes of talking to Jake (and then five minutes assuring his mom that Sid didn’t mind), promising him that he’d take care of Mona and let Jake visit whenever his parents said it was okay before Jake agrees that he guesses they can have her. “But only ‘cause you play hockey an’ have a really little baby,” he says darkly, which is enough of a blessing for Sid as he’s ever going to get. He hires Mona the next day.

\- - -

The home opener is a shitshow, no two ways about it. Mona looks sympathetic when Sid comes in and says, “No Geno?”

“No,” Sid says. “He needs time alone after games like this.”

“Understandable,” Mona says with a yawn and a stretch, and bids Sid goodnight before heading to her room.

Sid lingers downstairs, walking in aimless circles and unsure what to do. He isn’t sure if he should wait up for Geno or not, or if it’s just him or Geno’s post-game sulk is taking longer than usual. And if it is taking longer than usual, he doesn’t know what it means. Does Geno not want to come home? Does he not want to see Sid? Maybe he blames Sid for the loss. Maybe he blames not sleeping as well. Maybe he blames _Rachel_.

The thought is so terrifying Sid has to unload the dishwasher to calm himself. If Geno blames Rachel, that means he’ll want them to move out. Maybe he’s sitting in his car thinking up the words to figure out how to tell Sid to pack his bags and go. And Sid could, now that he has Mona hired and feels more settled, but he can’t imagine wanting to, can’t imagine trying to act like it’s okay after he went to all that trouble to arrange the article and make sure Rachel impacted Geno as little as possible. Hadn’t Geno known she would? She’s just a baby, she can’t help -

He’s stopped from getting too angry at Geno for nothing by the door opening and Geno coming inside, swearing quietly at the cold.

“Freezing out,” he says, walking into the kitchen, and then stops and stares at Sid nervously drying cutlery even though it’s already gleaming. “Sid, what you doing?” He asks, putting his hand on Sid’s arm.

“I get that you’re probably not sleeping as well,” Sid says in a rush. “And that maybe that’s affecting your game. So if you’ve changed your mind and if you want us to move out -”

“No,” Geno says, and Sid tries not to sag too obviously with a relief. “I like... I like come home to full house. Take mind off things. Just been a long time.”

Sid thinks about how all the tension melted away the second he looked into Rachel’s room and saw her asleep, how smelling her baby shampoo when he kissed her forehead had made that night’s problems seem far away and easily fixed. “It is better, isn’t it?” He asks.

“Yes,” Geno agrees. “Is much better.”

\- - -

Rachel’s always well-behaved when Sid and Geno come home from road trips, like she’s trying to charm them into never leaving her again. All she wants to do is be held, and Sid and Geno always have to rocks-paper-scissors for who gets her first.

Sid wins after the New York trip, which Geno accepts with slightly better grace than usual, still relaxed from their win. So Sid smugly accepts Rachel’s excited babbling and “kisses” (mashing her face into his cheek and drooling on him) while Geno carries his bag in, and then grabs Sid’s, even though Sid tells him a million times he doesn’t have to.

“I have turn?” Geno asks when he comes in, making it suddenly very clear why he was sucking up to Sid so much.

“Mhm,” Sid hums, not really all that eager to give Rachel up quite yet, but Geno carried his bag in, so. He’s pressing a final kiss to Rachel’s cheek when she turns, points at Geno, and very clearly says, “Papa!”

Geno and Sid both freeze, Geno with Sid’s duffel half-lowered to the ground. “What she say?” He asks.

“Papa!” Rachel repeats, and then holds out her arms and squirms towards him, clearly ready to go to the next adult for attention. Geno takes her almost mechanically.

“She call me Papa,” he says.

“She doesn’t really know what that means,” Sid points out.

“It means she think I parent,” Geno says softly, awed. It’s hard for Sid to remember, sometimes, that being a parent is a cool thing. Lately it means saying things like “that magnet isn’t for eating, Rachel,” and getting far too little sleep. He personally thinks it’s cooler that Geno _wants_ that responsibility, even though Rachel is a minor terror who’s still clinging to that two AM crying jag like it’s necessary. Sid came in when the hardest thing he had to do was change some pretty awful diapers. Of course, Rachel’s cuter now and less of a wrinkly lump, which makes up for a lot of sins.

“You are,” Sid blurts out, because Geno does half the work with Rachel, it only seems fair, until he remembers that parents are forever and that’s not something he has any right to tie Geno to. “I mean, if you want. You could... I mean there’s no such thing as too many dads, right? Or Uncle, we could teach her Uncle -”

“I want,” Geno says thickly, and then clears his throat. “I - I like being Papa.”

Sid lets out a breath he didn’t know he was holding, relieved for a reason he can’t name. “Good,” he says, squeezing Geno’s arm gently.

\- - -

One of the few things Sid never managed to think through was what it would be like to try and parent with an injury. His nose isn’t that bad, all things considered, but Mona’s summation of how Sid looks after the Isles game is “yikes.”

“It’s better than it looks,” Sid insists, and Geno comes in behind him and snorts.

“Tell to my car,” he says, and then turns to Mona. “I drive home from airport because airplane pressure make Sid bleed too much.”

“I didn’t get blood on your car!” Sid says indignantly. The cuff of his dress shirt is another matter and he’s going to have to put peroxide on it soon, but Geno’s car is still immaculate.

“I not just worried about _car_ ,” Geno says. “I worry you lose lots of blood, and nose size of...” He sighs and pouts, unable to find an accurate comparison before he just settles on, “Nose big.”

“You’re one to talk,” Sid mutters childishly.

“My nose always big, you stop puck with face,” Geno says, and then turns to Mona, who’s watching them like they’re a mildly interesting TV show. “How Rachel?”

Rachel is fine, of course. She refused to eat her peas the night before, but she always goes through phases of refusing to eat certain things just to prove that she can, so Sid isn’t particularly concerned. They go about their normal lives - Geno to call his parents, Sid to get started on laundry - until Rachel wakes up from her mid-morning nap. As usual, Sid is the one to take her, because he can hear Geno still chattering away in Russian to someone. The joking tone of voice that’s devoid of any sort of respect makes Sid think it must be his brother.

Rachel beams when she sees him, her cries melting away into happy giggles as she pulls herself up and holds her arms out to be cuddled. “Da _da_ ,” she insists, making grabby motions. “Dada.”

“Hey, Kiddo,” Sid says, lifting her up and gingerly kissing her, careful around his nose. “Heard you didn’t eat your peas last night.”

“Ba,” Rachel says, flailing her tiny fists until one connects, very solidly, with the part of Sid’s nose that’s the most tender, and he can feel the blood start to sluggishly ooze again. His painkillers are wearing off, too, and it hurts like a bitch.

“Mother-” Sid starts, and then he remembers Rachel is in the picking up words phase, “of _God_. Careful with Daddy’s nose, Rachel.”

“Nuh!” Rachel tries to reach for the blood, which must be interesting to her, all red and wet.

“Please don’t touch,” Sid begs helplessly. He can see her tiny hands getting closer and closer to sticking up his nose and causing all sorts of painful catastrophe. Luckily Geno walks by, takes one look at Sid craning his neck away and Rachel’s tiny, determined face before he says a terse goodbye in Russian and swoops in, plucking Rachel from Sid’s arms.

“Idiot,” Geno mutters, grabbing a handful of tissues and giving them to Sid. “Baby full contact sport.”

“You were on the phone,” Sid says petulantly, “am I supposed to ignore her crying?”

“You supposed to get me,” Geno says. “Now go ice.”

“Go ice” is what Sid is regulated to for the rest of the day, much to his displeasure. Geno is hawkish, interceding any time Rachel gets close to touching Sid’s face, which means no playing, no cuddles, nothing except diaper changes, and even those Geno watches, frowning worriedly.

“She’s _my kid_ ,” Sid says helplessly when Geno shoos him away for the billionth time.

“You my captain,” Geno insists. “Go ice.”

When it hits 2 AM and Rachel starts wailing, Sid is still awake, feeling itchy and hemmed in by the extra pillows to keep him from hurting his nose more. The icepack he took up to bed is lukewarm water, puddling on his bedside table, his nose is still cold, and he misses his goddamn kid. Her crying sounds strangely wonderful to him, and he’s out of bed immediately, tiptoe-running across the hall to her nursery and picking her up.

“Hey, Kiddo,” he whispers while they pad downstairs to get her a bottle of formula. “Let’s not tell Geno we’re hanging out, okay?”

But Geno finds him and Rachel asleep in the armchair the next morning, and Sid is woken by pointed sighing.

“Mnuh,” he says, cracking out the kinks in his neck. “Shut up.”

“I not say anything,” Geno says placidly, handing Sid a mug of coffee.

“You think I’m crazy,” Sid mutters, which he isn’t - he’d like to see Geno handle no cuddling or playing with Rachel while _his_ nose throbs like a bitch.

Geno just smiles. “Not my fault you read minds,” he says.

\- - -

And then, just when Sid’s healed and everything’s calmed down, Geno gets injured, and much worse than Sid ever did.

“I _fine_ ,” he insists with a frown the next day, like he wasn’t wobbly and propped up on Sid when Sid drove him home the night before. “No more dizzy. Remember after hit now. Sore neck. Just need rest.”

“What do the doctors say?” Sid asks, shifting Rachel to his hip. He’d already planned on bringing her to the rink for optional skate, and maybe he should have called Mona in for overtime now that Geno’s hurt, but he’d felt like he needed Rachel with him, needed the sense of normalcy that came from skating in slow circles with her around the Adams and Kunitz kids while she giggled and clapped. “I’m asking them after I talk to you, so if you lie to me -”

“Small concussion,” Geno grumbles. “Almost healed. And I sprain neck.”

“We can move back to the Lemieuxs,” Sid says. “Until you get better - don’t you dare shake your head at me.”

“Rachel make me feel better,” Geno says, and then smiles a little mischievously. “And maybe I get in trouble if you not watch. Shake head lots.”

“Your Papa’s silly,” Sid tells Rachel around a rush of relief. She’s solemnly watching the two of them while cuddling Iceburgh close. “I think we have to keep a close eye on him, what do you think?”

“Papa,” Rachel agrees.

For the most part, Geno’s a good patient, better than Sid ever was, at any rate. He’s obedient about everything but how much Sid prescribes he should handle Rachel, insisting on taking the 2 AM feeding before game days no matter how much Sid protests he needs rest more than Sid does.

“If I needed help I’d pay Mona to stay over more,” he tells Geno the next morning, scrambling eggs maybe a bit too emphatically. “If my daughter injures you worse, I’d -” he doesn’t know what he’d do, actually, but he knows he’d never forgive himself.

“I wear neck brace when I do it,” Geno says, watching Rachel smush her scrambled eggs in her mouth. “Sid worry too much.”

Sid grits his teeth and goes back to their eggs, biting back all the things he wants to say about Geno being necessary, needing Geno healthy, how frayed around the edges he feels and how constantly he worries. Geno doesn’t need to know how he lies awake some nights, worried it’ll be a year before he sees Geno at his point on the powerplay, worried it will affect Geno’s contract negotiations, worried he’s made the wrong choice staying in Geno’s house, worried about everything, really. He loves caring for people, he’d never have adopted Rachel if he didn’t, but lately caring for Geno is so much more fraught with heartache than caring for Rachel is. Geno’s restless, and Sid can tell from the tightness around his mouth his neck hurts more than he’s saying, but all Sid can do is clap his shoulder gently or give the back of Geno’s neck a quick, friendly rub. It’s not enough for Sid. There’s a strange tugging in his chest when he looks at Geno, a swirl of protective feelings that are exactly and nothing like how he feels towards Rachel, and they’re all too tangled for Sid to sort through. All he can do is dither and worry and play hockey, and try not to nag more than is absolutely necessary.

Geno’s cleared two and a half weeks later, to everyone’s relief. “Back to normal,” he says, blowing a celebratory raspberry on Rachel’s tummy. Sid’s chest aches still in that possessive, protective way it’s taken to aching around Geno, but maybe that will stop now that Geno’s healthy. He hopes it will.

“Good,” he says. “Normal is good.”

\- - -

Rachel hates baths.

She's always hated baths, as long as Sid's known her- she screams and squalls and wails and flails the second she gets in contact with water, like she’s half-baby, half-kitten. It's part of her personality, he figures. Some kids like some things and some don’t, and baths are one of the few things Rachel has an avowed dislike of. But Geno thinks otherwise.

“Babies love bath,” he says stubbornly, “Natalie and Victoria love bath.”

But no matter how many times Sid reminds Geno that Natalie and Victoria are not the only other children in the world, he remains stubborn. He tries playing peekaboo while Sid bathes Rachel, then songs in Russian and English, and finally he decides that the common denominator is Sid. " _You_ do wrong," he insists.

“There’s nothing wrong,” Sid says firmly. “She’s been like this since she was a newborn. She just hates baths.”

“I show,” Geno says, so Sid puts his hands up and lets Geno pick Rachel up and carry her off for a bath. Let him deal with it. Either Sid gets the night off, or he really is bathing Rachel wrong but never has to deal with impossible bathtimes again; no matter what, he wins.

Rachel seems suspicious when it’s Geno who picks her up and heads to the bathroom with Sid as the one trailing behind for a change, but she’s pretty game, letting Geno undress her with minimal fuss. But when it’s clear that Geno isn’t just changing her, she gets pouty.

“ _No_ , Papa,” she says. ‘No’ is her new word, and one she likes to use to order Sid around as often as possible until he does something right, when she’ll nod and give him a pleased little ‘da’. Geno is not getting the pleased reaction. He’s getting a wind-up to a screaming and pounding fists reaction. “Nonononono.”

“Yes, bath. Get you clean. Clean baby nice, yes?”

“ _No_ ,” Rachel says, and then notices Sid is trailing behind them to the bathroom. “Dada,” she whines. “Dada, no?”

“Geno’s giving you a bath,” Sid says. Rachel’s chin crumples up the way it always does before she wails.

And Rachel wails quite a bit. She wails more than Sid has ever seen her wail since he tried to get her to eat raisins the once. No amount of soothing in any language gets her to calm down or stop splashing, and neither do songs, peekaboo, tickling, or finally, pleading. Sid would laugh at Geno’s utter bewilderment, but he’s pretty sure that’s both mean and bad parenting. By the time Geno struggles through, Rachel has managed to soak both Geno and a good half of the bathroom.

“Towel?” Geno asks grimly, reaching one arm out to Sid, and Sid really looks at him instead of watching Rachel and notices that Geno, like everything on that side of the bathroom, is drenched. His hair is dark and matted to his forehead, water is running down his nose, and his white t-shirt is soaked and plastered to him like a second skin. Sid can see every muscle in Geno’s arm flex and his mouth goes abruptly dry.

“Sure,” he says, handing it over to Geno. It’s not news Geno’s good-looking, it’s just never bothered Sid before. There are plenty of good-looking guys on the team, guys Sid has seen naked hundreds of times without a second thought. But none of them have ever stood in Sid’s bathroom soaking wet, holding his (beautiful, amazing, grumpy) daughter after a half an hour trying to bathe her, and Sid hasn’t had sex in three months. Which isn’t his longest stretch but it’s still. It’s been a while, and Sid’s probably just over-tired, since he’s been trying to get Rachel to sleep through the night before the playoffs start.

“You right,” Geno grumbles, wiping his face off with the corner of Rachel’s towel. “She hate bath.”

“Hey, at least you tired her out,” Sid says, taking Rachel, which calms her down almost immediately. “Maybe she’ll sleep through the night.” He looks down at Rachel, whose eyes are drooping. “What do you think, Kiddo, gonna sleep well tonight?”

“No,” Rachel mumbles, and Geno chuckles in a way that makes Sid’s stomach squirm. He shouldn’t be thinking about getting laid while holding his kid, but it’s definitely something he needs to deal with, and soon.

\- - -

If Sid had his way, all off days would be spent napping and doing errands with Rachel, but Geno always has more elaborate visions of going to the playground or the mall or, in the case of that particular day, the zoo.

“She need fun things to do,” Geno says. “Zoo best fun, Sid. They let you pet animals.” And, well, there aren’t any pressing errands to run, so Sid can’t argue with that.

It’s a Tuesday morning, so it’s quiet, just school groups and parents too busy watching their kids to bother Sid or Geno. The only person who takes pictures of them is Geno, because he has to snap a million on his phone of Rachel petting every different animal. She likes the sheep best, especially when it bleats at her, and she claps her hands and goes “Ba!”

“You need smile more, Sid,” Geno says, snapping pictures of Rachel’s beatific expression as she pats the sheep over and over again. “She smile, you don’t.”

“Is the sheep going to bite her?” Sid frets. “Sheep bite, right?”

“You worry too much,” Geno says, putting his hand on the back of Sid’s neck and rubbing it in a way that’s probably meant to be soothing, but sets something fizzy and deliciously warm sparking in the pit of his stomach that he doesn’t want to examine while holding a nine month old in public.

“Look Rachel,” Sid says a little desperately. “Deer!”

The petting zoo portion tires Rachel out, and she conks out blissfully while Sid rocks her in her stroller, looking at the real penguins play while chewing on Iceburgh’s beak.

“Today was nice,” Sid says as Rachel’s eyes droop. He can feel Geno watching him, but he’s purposefully not turning around.

“We do more often, maybe,” Geno suggests, knocking their elbows together, and when Sid turns to look at him there’s a soft, sweet look in his eyes, the kind he normally gets around Rachel, but he’s looking at Sid, and Sid doesn’t know what to do with that. It’s all too much, it’s too _good_ to be meant for only Sid. Geno must be feeling soppy after a whole day of watching Rachel be cute, Sid decides, panicking a little, it doesn’t have anything to do with him, it doesn’t make any sense. He just knows he’s never been more grateful for Rachel half waking up and whimpering when a group of noisy kids passes by.

“I got her,” he says, and looks away, purposefully breaking the moment.

\- - -

There are a few more incidents, after that, where Sid can feel that he and Geno are edging around something big and scary. There are moments where they pass each other in the pantry or nursery and linger, Geno looking like there’s something he wants to say and Sid’s heart kicking into overdrive.

Sid’s not dumb, he knows he’s harboring a crush. He’s probably totally obvious and making Geno feel uncomfortable, and he feels like shit about it. Penguins hockey is supposed to be a brotherhood - Geno’s supposed to be his _brother_ , not someone Sid looks at and wants more from, not when Geno’s given him so much already. And Sid’s the captain, he’s supposed to be an example. Instead he pines, like he’s a teenager again, only he’d always preferred his crushes to remain unrequited then. Having someone who mattered so much always seemed scary and risky, but now Sid has Rachel, who matters more than anyone, and it’s not scary, it’s wonderful. He thinks maybe he and Geno could be wonderful too, if their lives were different, if it wasn’t so much to ask.

And around all this, Rachel keeps changing too. By time they go into the playoffs, her new favorite game is to pull herself on top of things - a dresser, a bookshelf, a table - and laugh as Sid and Geno scramble to get her down. Rachel, Sid realizes with not a little heartache, has grown out of being a baby and become a tiny human. She has likes (Iceburgh, all fruits except raisins, climbing, mouthing kitchen implements, short car rides) and her dislikes (yogurt, no one paying attention to her, baths, long car rides). She’s chatty, even if the only words she knows are still “Dada”,“Papa”, and “no”. she’s laser-focused on getting exactly what she wants, and she’s overwhelmingly cheerful about almost everything. She has enough hair for Geno to put tiny black and gold barrettes in it before games. She’s heavy when he picks her up now. She’s his little girl, not just his baby anymore, and she’s changing along with everything else.

Sid isn’t sure he likes it.

\- - -

Going out to the Bruins in a hard-fought Game 6 during the second round hurts more than usual. It was an easy loss, if there’s such a thing. The Bruins played a good, physical series. The Pens played well, but Boston played better, and that’s all there was to it. In a way, Sid is glad. Let someone else win a Stanley Cup that will forever have an asterisk as a half-season win. He always wants the Cup, but he’d rather have the real thing, when no one can argue he didn’t deserve the title.

But it still hurts, not just because it’s the end of another year of hockey, it’s the end of Sid’s relative idyll. Losing means that Sid goes back to Cole Harbour and Geno goes back to Moscow, and their tiny family scatters to the wind. Because that’s how he thinks of it now - they’re a family, and they work in a way that even Sid’s real family in Cole Harbour doesn’t. He and Geno have a settled into a rhythm between themselves and Mona, and he’s terrified of losing it, terrified that once again when Geno goes to Russia he’ll come back a stranger, or that he won’t come back at all. Geno’s contract looms large like a specter over them, one Geno refuses to talk about and Sid doesn’t know how to broach.

So instead he keeps silent while Geno packs and Rachel is fearful and fussy, picking up on the unspoken tension between them. Geno opens his mouth a lot when he looks at Sid, like he wants to say something, but then shakes his head and sighs, pouting the way he does when he doesn’t know the words to use. Sid wants Geno to tell him _anything_ , to know if this is how they’ll always be, moving around each other with silence and secrets hard and uncomfortable between them.

Rachel sleeps fitfully the night before Geno leaves, and Sid can hear her thrash and fret through the baby monitor. He doesn’t go to her. He wants to, but he knows it will do more harm than good. He needs the comfort more than he does. She’s cranky in the morning, but she holds it together until they’re on the front step saying their final goodbye, when she starts to cry tiny, hiccupping tears.

“Come here, _ptichka_ ,” Geno says softly, lifting Rachel into his arms. He murmurs to her in Russian, comforting noises Sid wishes he understood, before shifting her to his hip and leaning in to hug Sid. Sid buries his face in Geno’s shoulder, holding tight and strangely afraid to let go.

“Don’t worry,” Geno says. “I not leave Rachel forever.”

 _What about the team?_ Sid wants to ask, and especially selfishly - _what about me?_ Instead he just says, “I know.” Geno gives him one last squeeze, kisses Rachel, and then lingers for a moment. Sid almost thinks he’s going to kiss _him_ , going to lean down and press his lips to Sid’s forehead, and he doesn’t hate the idea as much as he thought he would. Instead, Geno just smiles sadly, gives Rachel back to Sid, hefts his bag, and gets in the taxi.

“Papa, _Papa_ ,” Rachel sobs wretchedly while Geno drives away, like her heart is broken and only Geno can fix it, and Sid knows exactly how she feels.

\- - -

Rachel is a menace moving back to Cole Harbour. Her sleep patterns, and therefore Sid’s sleep patterns, dissolve into a total mess after Geno leaves. She’s tired all the time, demanding and screaming for her Papa and prone to burst into exhausted tears and cry herself to sleep over any tiny thing.

They try Skyping Geno together, once, and Rachel wails and bangs at the computer screen so hard when she sees Geno’s face that Sid has to end the call before she breaks his laptop and put her down for a nap. Geno just looks like someone punched him when Sid calls him back a half hour later, and Sid knows the feeling.

“Maybe we not do that again,” Geno suggests.

“Maybe not,” Sid says.

Sid’s mom says it’s normal at Rachel’s age to regress on sleep patterns, and the parenting books Sid left up in Cole Harbour all agree. Still, Sid feels, in some deep place in his gut, that this is more about Geno. This is what he gets for letting Rachel get so attached when he knew that Geno would leave her in a few more months.

Ashley visits and comes over to help a lot, since her finals are over and her summer semester still hasn’t started. She’s good with Rachel, but now that Sid’s more practiced in what to look for he can see that she’s stiff and hesitant, like she’s afraid of Rachel and doesn’t want to be, all at once. She’s no Geno or Mona, but she’s a grown up who’s willing to hold and indulge Rachel, and so Rachel accepts her as a substitute with uneasy grace. And Ashley sticking around for summer classes turns out to be useful when Rachel decides, once her sleep has settled back down, that while sleeping through the night is okay, that napping more than twice a day is impossible. Sid had planned his entire summer training regimen around Rachel. He’d even already cancelled his trip out to LA, just because he couldn’t imagine Rachel handling the time change, and he certainly couldn’t imagine leaving her with his mom when she was already so emotionally fragile, not when Sid wasn’t feeling the most stable himself.

They all settle into a new pattern - Sid leaving Rachel with his mom or Ashley when she goes down for her first nap and coming back when she wakes up from her second. And every night when she’s gone to bed, Sid Skypes Geno to tell him everything he’s missed. Slowly, Geno stops looking like the mention of Rachel is like a sucker punch to the gut, and slowly telling Geno instead of having him around stops feeling like a sucker punch too.

“You must miss the help you had back in Pittsburgh,” Ashley says one weekend when Sid and Rachel are over and Taylor’s taken Rachel, trying to make conversation. Sid just nods awkwardly, even though that’s not it at all. He does miss Geno’s easy way with Rachel and he misses how she lights up when she sees him, but most of all he misses _Geno_. He misses the routine they’ve established, the weight of Geno’s comforting hand on his shoulder to calm him down, Geno’s smile and smell and booming laugh. Some days he’s jealous of Rachel, for still knowing how to express her discontent so easily, for being allowed to do it so freely. He envies that she has something concrete and explicable to miss, and when he gets down to it, he and Geno were nothing worth missing at all.

But he’s sure Geno’s having the time of his life back in Russia, with no responsibilities and neither Sid or Rachel around. He’s probably living like a successful, young, single, good-looking guy should be. Sid reminds himself a lot that Geno might not even be single anymore - Sid can never keep track of if Geno and Oksana are dating, but he masochistically hopes they are. He hopes they’re happy, and he hopes this time Oksana moves to Pittsburgh so Sid can kick himself out of Geno’s house, and he hopes they get married and have kids of their own. He convinces himself he means it, because Geno’s going to be a good dad that deserves kids the right way, not with Sid. What Sid wants is too impossible to even mention, and he’s let himself want it for so long he started treating Geno like it was already true, like Geno was already Rachel’s father. He just hopes Geno will one day find it in his heart to forgive Sid for using him, the same way Sid will have to one day find it in his heart to forgive Geno for letting him.

\- - -

Rachel’s first birthday party isn’t fancy, more a neighborhood cookout than anything special. Sid figures that he’ll have plenty more years ahead of him of big, fancy parties, and it’s best to keep it low-key while he can. Besides, at this age Rachel’s more excited by people fawning over her and being allowed to eat as messily as she wants than she would be over anything else. Sid’s dad and Taylor take roughly a million pictures of Rachel doing everything, and it takes an hour for Sid to go through them all and cherry-pick a few good ones to send around to everyone, but the rest he sticks in an online album for Geno.

“You not have to do that,” Geno says the next morning when Sid Skypes him.

“Of course I did, she’s practically your kid too,” Sid says, and Geno’s face does something wounded and complicated Sid can’t put a name to.

“No she not,” Geno says quietly.

“Geno -”

“Is okay,” Geno says in a voice that sounds the opposite of okay. “I know what I am, Sid.”

 _You could be more,_ Sid wants to say, but he’s chickenshit, so he just says, “okay” back.

Geno doesn’t disappear after that, but he does get harder to reach. He’s very pointedly not on Skype in the morning when they usually chat, and he doesn’t immediately respond to Sid’s e-mails and texts anymore. When they do talk, it’s stilted and awkward, and Geno keeps making references to “when Sid move out” or “when Rachel grow up”, like they could happen any day. If Sid didn’t know better he’d think Geno was dropping hints, like being back in Russia and baby free made him suddenly miss living alone, but whenever he brings it up Geno looks too miserable for that to be the case. He guesses it’s healthy, for Geno to detach from Rachel. He can’t really excuse living with Geno another year, and he probably _should_ move out. He’s steeling himself for the moment Geno kicks him out when Geno says, one day, out of nowhere, “Metallurg offer me contract.”

“What?” Sid asks. “Like, a real one?”

“A good one,” Geno says. He looks uncomfortable.

“You’re not going to take it, right?” Sid says. “I mean, we haven’t won a second Cup together, that’s what we always said we’d do.”

Geno’s face is still, somber. “No,” he says after a long silence. “I just think more, this time. I wonder now if maybe is selfish, not to be home, starting family.”

Sid looks at Geno and knows, in that moment, that losing any part of him is intolerable, that he’ll never forgive himself if Geno goes and starts his own family and Sid never had the guts to point out that Geno was part of his family, first. “I need to tell you something,” he says. “Not - this isn’t negotiations, no one told me to say - but I want - I need you to stay. I need you.”

“Sid,” Geno says gently. “You have Mona. You be fine without me.”

“I don’t - that’s not _it_ ,” Sid says. He shuts his eyes and swallows hard. “I need, I need _you_ , Geno. I need _you_ to be the one doing this with me and teaching Rachel Russian and how to ride a bike and - I don’t call for Rachel, I could e-mail you easier, but I need to see you, okay?”

Geno’s face is blank and meditative. “What you trying to say, Sid?” He asks. Even his tone is impossible to read.

“I think,” Sid clears his throat. “We’re more than just friends, or family. And I want us to be.”

“Okay,” Geno says softly.

“I mean I want to kiss you.”

“I say okay, Sid,” Geno says, and Sid lets himself really look at Geno, who’s smiling hopefully at him, and - _oh_.

“That easy?” He asks, and Geno laughs.

“Oh Sid,” he says. “Nothing easy about you.”

\- - -

Things almost go back to normal after that, or as normal as they get, which is to say, not very normal at all. There’s not a lot that changes between Sid and Geno except that Geno’s more open, more vocal about missing Sid and Rachel, more flirty where he used to hold back or just smile. It all feels easy and natural, especially when compared to parenting a 12 month old with no concept of personal space.

Rachel had always been a little clingy, but Geno left right when she was old enough to understand he was gone, and now her clinginess has reached new, previously unheard-of levels. She understands when Sid leaves the room that he still exists, and her mobility makes her determined to either find or follow him wherever he goes. Solitude is an illusion, Sid discovers, even when he tries to shut the door to pee. He tries it once, and Rachel bawls. She wails. Her tiny fists smack and rattle the door and Sid cannot, for the life of him, pee with that sort of racket going on. With a sigh, he pulls his pants back up and opens the door, and Rachel’s face immediately clears, like she was never upset at all.

“Dada!” She says, clapping, pleased with her new trick of summoning him with tears.

“We’re not going to tell Geno about this,” he tells her.

“Da,” Rachel agrees solemnly.

“I am about to be a very bad parent,” Sid says, shifting for a few minutes before he decides no, he really can’t hold it in.

This was not something he was warned about, he thinks, betrayed. He had read what felt like every parenting book, and not once did any of them mention that your child learning object permanence would result in attempting to circumspectly pee while said child looked on with bright, curious eyes. He had never planned on Rachel seeing what he looked like without pants. He is positive that he will pay for this, probably with therapy. Rachel will grow up and cry on some shrink’s couch about her father peeing in front of her, and all Sid will have to say in his defense is that she made him. The only bright side he can think of is that maybe, just maybe, this will be positive modeling for potty training.

“This is what grownups do,” Sid tells an avidly listening Rachel. “They go potty.”

Rachel sucks on her fist, considering, and then crawls back to the living room, apparently bored with him now that his humiliation is complete.

Sid feels trapped, sometimes, between the unsexy realities of his life - being watched while he pees, Rachel’s diaper after she tries guacamole, Rachel’s new favorite game of emptying low bookshelves - and the tentative, budding romance he harbors with Geno when Rachel’s gone to sleep. Part of him is afraid that there’s a reason nothing happened between them when Geno was actually around, that absence makes the heart grow fonder and makes Geno romanticize and forget what Sid’s life _is_ , and what Geno’s signing up for if he wants to share it.

“I know what you doing,” Geno interrupts Sid during his story about Rachel’s giant sobbing fit when Iceburgh fell behind the couch and Sid couldn’t find him for a solid half hour. “You try to scare me off.”

“Maybe,” Sid says, guilty. “I just don’t want you to think this is going to be romantic, or that I’m - I mean, she _watches me pee._ ”

“Just pee?” Geno asks, bemused. “She know when you shit, give privacy then?”

“Hah hah,” Sid says flatly.

“Rachel mine too,” Geno reminds him. “I not surprise. I... happy.” He laughs a little. “I think is good. Most people, they learn years later. We know now and still like.”

“And you still miss this?” Sid asks incredulously. Geno’s smile turns bittersweet.

“Always,” he promises.

\- - -

Sid’s birthday comes and goes quietly. He never does much to mark it, just grilling some fish and burgers with his parents, Taylor, and Ashley. Rachel helps him blow out the candles on his favorite double-chocolate cake and steals the show by adorably mashing hers into her face and hair, which Sid takes pictures of and sends to Geno.

“She get so big,” Geno says sadly when Sid Skypes him during Rachel’s nap. She still can’t get on Skype with Geno without getting very angry about him not really being there. He sounds sad and distracted, the way he’s started to always sound when Rachel comes up.

“She walked,” Sid admits. “She keeps doing it for a few steps and then -” Geno sighs heavily. “I’m sorry, do you not want to know?”

“No, I just -” Geno sighs again. “I miss so much.” He pauses, and then, “Miss _you_ , Sid.”

“But I’ve been walking forever,” Sid says awkwardly.

“ _Sid_ ,” Geno says. His tone is severe but he looks like he wants to laugh. “You know what I mean.”

Sid does know. He knows Geno signed a contract last week - the same one Sid signed last summer. He knows Geno has plans, plans that involve him and Rachel and notions of forever. He knows what it’s like to want to get started on the rest of their lives right now, he just doesn’t know how to accept that any of this good fortune is his. A year ago he was lonely and didn’t even know Rachel was alive, and now his life is _Goodnight Moon_ and wobbly steps and diaper changes and Geno, not just hockey and hockey and more hockey.

He doesn’t miss it. But he does miss Geno.

\- - -

Sid and Rachel head back down to Pittsburgh a week later, ostensibly so Sid can get Rachel settled from the move before camp and check in with the prospects who are coming up early, but more because it makes him feel a little closer to Geno to be in their home, even if there’s still a month to go before Geno’s scheduled to be there. Rachel takes the move much easier, and while she still waddles around the house every morning asking for Papa, it’s with an air of resignation, like she knows he’s hiding somewhere she can’t find him.

Sid corrals her one mid-August morning after her searching for Papa ritual, latching the baby gate and settling in to finally reply to the backlog of e-mail he’d let build up when the doorbell rings.

“Papa,” Rachel says confidently, smacking two blocks together.

“No,” Sid says, kissing the top of her head and stepping over the baby gate. “I’m sure it’s just -” but he forgets what he’s going to say when he opens the door and against all odds it _is_ Geno - jetlagged and rumpled, but Geno. All Sid can think is, _why did he ring his own doorbell?_ “Geno,” He says blankly. “You’re -”

“Surprise?” Geno rubs the back of his neck, stepping a little closer, and Sid feels like everything in him is shaking with the need to reach out and touch. “I come back early, if - is okay, yes?”

“Of course,” Sid says. “It’s your house, of course you -”

“ _Papa!_ ” Rachel shrieks from the living room, verging on hysteria. “Papa, Papa, Papa!”

“You have a fan,” Sid says stepping aside, because as much as he wants to yank Geno down and kiss him silly, Rachel’s always going to come first, for both of them. Geno gives him a sheepish smile and a quick hug before running into the living room and lifting Rachel into the air.

“I miss you and your daddy so much, _ptichka_ ,” he says, covering her face with kisses until she squeals. “You grow so big without me! I tell you not to do. Never listen.”

“Papa,” Rachel says contentedly, settling into Geno’s arms for what is clearly intended to be the long haul.

And for the rest of the day, Rachel treats Geno to her special brand of invasive adoration. She trails after him everywhere, napping when he naps, eating when he eats, which means that Sid is left also trailing after Geno, trying to keep him from being overwhelmed by too much baby all at once. Geno takes both of them easily in stride, as though he never left, though he and Sid keep brushing fingers at inopportune moments.They both freeze every time it happens, and Geno’s eyes go wide, then heated, and Sid’s stomach squirms.

Rachel finally falls asleep sitting in Geno’s lap after what feels like the longest day Sid can remember, and he and Geno carry her to her room and tuck her in. “Well,” Sid says in a low voice, which is the first word he’s spoken directly to Geno since he showed up on the doorstep. “You’re probably tired, so -”

“Sid,” Geno whispers, catching his arm before Sid can flee to the living room. Geno’s eyes are huge and hopeful when Sid turns around to look at him. Geno is maybe the third surest thing Sid’s known, after wanting to play hockey and wanting to keep Rachel. He wants to keep Geno too, all for himself. He wants to be selfish.

Their noses bump when they kiss, fumbling a little in the dark with the height difference and not wanting to stop kissing long enough to get it right. And then they do and it’s so right, so easy to sink into. First kisses, Sid had always thought, should be nervous and giddy, but he likes this surety and warmth better. He likes the lazy tingles racing down his spine and the syrupy way time moves and stretches around them as they shuffle to the bedroom, as if they’ve done this a million times before. Geno has,he realizes, Geno’s gotten up a million times in the dark and padded down to Rachel’s room for a 2 AM feeding, and the thought that he has a fourteen month old to thank for making it easier to get laid makes him chuckle against Geno’s mouth.

“Nothing, just thought of something weird,” he says when Geno pulls away.

“You always weird,” Geno laughs, kissing the corner of Sid’s eye, and Sid sighs happily, letting his head fall forward onto Geno’s broad, warm chest.

“Are you too tired?” He asks. “I can - we can wait until her nap tomorrow, if you want.”

“Only if you want,” Geno says.

“No, I just, with someone else I get, um,” Sid blushes. “I can get loud? And I don’t want to wake her and you just flew in...” Geno groans and cuts him off with a knee-wobbling kiss that makes Sid pull Geno so close that they fall back into the door with a thunk.

“Next time,” Geno whispers in Sid’s ear, “we get a babysitter.”

“Oh my god,” Sid says weakly. In the back of his mind, he wonders when he became someone who got wildly turned on by the idea of getting a babysitter, but he also doesn’t really care. He’ll worry about that when he doesn’t need to drag Geno into his bedroom, close the door, and do things his daughter will never, ever know about.

\- - -

Naps, it turns out, are the perfect length of time for sex. Rachel goes down for an hour and a half, which gives them at least good hour of alone time that, if they’re fast, means they can even fit in a short afterglow and shower, for good measure. Sid sometimes wishes he and Geno had figured themselves out before Rachel, so they could have entire lazy days of sex, or maybe even multiple rounds, or whenever he wanted, or at least sex without half-listening to the baby monitor. But he thinks, maybe, he’s glad it happened this way, when there’s nothing left to question. Geno knows the stakes better than anyone and he’s still there, deftly juggling Sid and Rachel and training like it’s the easiest thing in the world.

“I have practice,” Geno shrugs, leaning down from where he’s holding Rachel and wiping her face clean to press a kiss to Sid’s neck. “Same as before, but now we have sex.”

“She _understands what you’re saying_ ,” Sid hisses, and Rachel blows a raspberry at them, smacking Geno’s hand away when he goes to wipe more applesauce.

But even though Sid is inclined to try to keep things normal and chaste in front of Rachel, Geno has a very different definition of what appropriate behavior in the presence child is, and it’s not a fight Sid cares enough about to have. Rachel seems to think it’s funny when Geno gives Sid’s ass a little smack or kisses him, especially if he’s holding her so she gets to see them kiss up close. She shrieks with laughter and puts a sticky, slobbery hand on each of their cheeks. “Dada,” she tells Sid when he pulls away to see what she wants. “Dada? Papa?”

“Yes,” Geno beams, because he understands Rachel-speak better than Sid does, half the time. “Yes, kisses for smart girls.” And then he lifts her up and kisses her tummy until she squeals, and God, Sid wants to kiss him again, without Rachel watching.

Instead, because he’s _that_ parent, Sid says, “don’t get her too worked up, Geno.”

“You get too worked up?” Geno coos at Rachel, kissing her tummy again and again until Rachel nearly explodes from joy, and Sid decides to let this one go.

\- - -

The first week they’re together, Geno shuts himself in the guest room for the morning and doesn’t tell Sid why. Sid hears him speaking seriously in Russian and sometimes yelling through the door, but he keeps Rachel occupied and doesn’t ask what it was about when Geno emerges looking tired but satisfied, and Geno doesn’t offer any explanation.

He tries to put it out of his mind, though, and trust Geno will tell him when he’s ready. He’s not sure he even wants to know what it’s about, he’s too happy floating in the dreamy, blissful haze of a infatuation, where mundane tasks suddenly seem unbearably wonderful when done together and the whole world seems shifted to shine a little brighter. Some days he even feels like Rachel’s diapers smell a little less, he’s just that happy.

But sure enough, a few days later, Geno comes and sits next to Sid while he lazily watches Rachel play in the sandbox. “I talk to agent,” he says, and Sid puts down the book he was only half-reading while trying to make sure Rachel doesn’t cross the threshold from acceptable to worrying amount of sand accidentally ingested. “And I think, I think we tell people we together. I not want you to move out, or not be Rachel’s Papa. So if you want, we tell people.”

“Geno,” Sid says quietly, turning away from Rachel. “That’s - that’s a big decision.”

“I know,” Geno says, taking Sid’s hand. His eyes are flinty and stubborn. Sid has a million questions - what about Sochi, what about protecting Rachel from negative attention, what about what people back in Russia think, what _will_ people back in Russia think, has Geno thought this through - but he looks at Geno’s face and they all die. That’s the face Geno gets before a PK, or the face of the boy who ducked out of a Finnish bathroom just for a chance to play in the NHL, even knowing what he would go through and what people would say. Geno is no head and all heart, but when his mind’s made up, it’s made up, and no amount of reason will change it. Geno wants Sid and Rachel as his, and so long as Sid wants the same thing (and he does, more than anything he _does_ ), that’s that.

“You sure?” He asks, because he’d be remiss if he didn’t ask, just once, and Geno smiles and nods.

“What I say with Rachel? Is family. You know when you know. I sure.”

“Okay,” Sid says, squeezing his hand. “Okay.”

\- - -

Sid wakes up with a start to the sound of Rachel calling him. At first he thinks it’s a dream, and he’s about to curl back under Geno’s arm and go to sleep when he hears her insistent, “Dada!”, warbling on the brink of tears.

Geno stirs next to him, and Sid presses a quick kiss to his shoulder before he pulls on a t-shirt and pads into Rachel’s room. Sure enough, she’s standing in her crib, waiting for him.

“Hey, Kiddo,” he says. “Have a bad dream?”

“No,” Rachel shakes her head violently. “Wa.”

It takes Sid’s sleep-foggy brain a few seconds to process that. “Water?” He asks. “You thirsty?”

“Yeh!” Rachel says. She’s started being able to differentiate between Russian and English words, though she still fixes Sid with a look sometimes like she thinks he’s stupid for not understanding her no matter what she says. “ _Wa_.”

“Alright,” Sid says, lifting her out of her crib. “Let’s get you some water.”

Rachel loses steam once Sid picks her up, resting her head on his shoulder. But she keeps whispering “ _wa_ ” in a tiny, insistent voice, so Sid hums tunelessly to her as he fills her sippy cup and while she starts sucking it down like she’d been wandering in the desert for years.

He sits down on the couch while Rachel finishes, and then lingers a little after she’s done and dropping back to sleep under his chin. She’s sweet like this, and his eyes feel so heavy, so he doesn’t think there’s too much harm in nodding off with his nose buried in her baby-fine hair. Sid’s woken up by Geno coming in the room an hour later to check on him, his entire face soft in the pre-dawn light.

“Oh, _Sid_ ,” he says. “You look...” He seems overwhelmed. “You look good with baby.”

“Good,” Sid yawns. “Because she’s sticking around for, like, at least seventeen more years.”

“Funny,” Geno says dryly, kneeling to give Sid a kiss gentle enough not to wake Rachel. “You come back to bed? Couch hurt back.”

“How old and rickety do you think I am?” Sid asks. “I can spend a few hours on the couch.”

“I think you stubborn and spoil Rachel,” Geno says, standing up and manhandling Sid a few inches to the left so Sid leans on him when he lies back again.

“That doesn’t help with either of those,” Sid says, and Geno just smiles.

“Maybe I stubborn and soft too,” he says. “Maybe I not want you to have all the hugs.”

“I’m not moving her,” Sid warns.

“Hugging you okay,” Geno says magnanimously.

“We’re all okay,” Sid says, which makes no sense, but Geno hums and presses a kiss to the top of Sid’s head, and Sid nods off like that - the first rays of sunlight bleeding through the living room window, Geno’s arms around him, Rachel asleep on his shoulder, and everything the way it should be.


End file.
